Definition of Soul
by Infinitesimi
Summary: If the only difference between human and homunculus is the possession of a soul, how, then, does one define the soul? AlWrath shorts.
1. In the Beginning

**Definition of Soul  
**

**In the Beginning **

I know they think I'm a monster. The girl and the old woman watch me all night and all day, like they think I'm going to do something horrible to their little treasure. They don't let him see me when he asks and they don't answer him when he asks them who I am. Maybe it's because they don't know.

In the beginning I don't know who he is. I don't understand that he is the suit of armor that thought it was a boy, I don't understand that he is the brother Fullmetal refused to lose. I just see this little kid, squirming under all the attention, alert, seeking, gathering the world in his eyes like he's never seen it before.

My body is tired, and I sleep more than I have ever slept before, and I think it's strange to sleep so much, the way humans sleep, every night. I can feel the stones in the core of my being rushing to repair the stumps where the arm and leg that were never mine once attached and the chemical burns that cover the side of my body, making me a blistering red monster and I know I must look frightening to him.

The first time he speaks to me it's to offer me a glass of milk, and I take it, only half listening to his babble. It's not until my hand brushes his that I sit up, looking at him for real this time, and demand to know who he is.

"Alphonse," he answers me patiently; he's probably told me his name already. "My name is Alphonse." He chatters on, and I listen half-heartedly while my heart pounds in my chest.

There is something inside of him that is not human.

In the beginning I ask him questions that he doesn't understand, and he becomes upset with me and leaves. Later the old woman comes in, and I think she is going to scold me for making him cry but instead she begins telling me about automail, the mechanical limbs she and the girl make a living building for people who have lost their own.

For people. I hope that maybe she doesn't see me as a monster after all, but when she leaves she locks the door with a click, like they always do, so that I cannot harm the precious boy upstairs.

At night I sleep and wake up in the morning, and I'm not used to losing so much of my day, but the girl comes in to rub ointment on my burns and is surprised at how much they have healed. The boy, the creature, Alphonse, stands in the doorway and watches. I think that he wants to talk to me but he never does, and the girl locks the door with a click.

The old woman comes and tells me how they will cut me open and torture me by putting metal inside of me, and how it will hurt me and how I will scream, and she smiles as she says it and I am angry again. I am angry because I realize that I don't care, there is nothing that she can do to me that will be worse than what has already been done. I've been betrayed by the one who created me, betrayed by the ones who made me what I am, betrayed by the very place from which I came and there's nothing left to care about. She can jam wires into my stumps if she so chooses.

In the middle of my screaming and thrashing and flailing she slaps me, hard, and I flop onto the center of the cot howling and holding my burned cheek. My anger has made her angry and I expect her to get out her knife and begin cutting me open right then, but she shakes her head and leaves the room.

I don't know that he has been watching until she leaves and I feel a touch on my back, soothing, up and down my spine, a small, gentle hand belonging to a body that houses thousands of human lives. "What are you doing?" I wimper, my face still buried in the clean sheets of the cot.

"My brother always does this for me when I'm upset," he says, his voice wistful, and I want to know who his brother is. When he tells me I understand in a moment of clarity what has happened. "What do you want me to call you?" he asks me abruptly, and I sit up, raising my eyes from the mattress to meet his own.

"Wrath," I say, and my voice is hoarse from screaming and crying.

"That's your name?" he asks, surprised, and I nod.

"The only one I have," I add, knowing that Izumi called me only "the child" and it was Dante who first called me Wrath, and Dante who I first called "mother."

"Wrath," he says softly, glancing behind him as if he thinks someone else is listening, "do you know where my brother is?"

I don't, but before I can tell him that the girl rushes in, placing herself between us as if she thinks I am going to attack him. She tells me not to talk to him and tells him not to talk to me and I realize it isn't that she thinks I will physically hurt him. She thinks I will tell him things no one wants him to know.

In the beginning I think that they are going to hurt me. In the beginning I think that they want to destroy me so that they can keep their human-shaped little boy without worrying about him being corrupted by the monster they think I am. He is cautious at first, hanging around in the background, and sometimes I yell at him that I know he's standing outside my door and why doesn't he just come in, and sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't. Still, for all I see of him, I don't know much more about him than he does of himself.


	2. Things That Aren't Mine

**Definition of Soul **

**Things That Aren't Mine**

I'm in my room when I first hear the shouting. It isn't really my room, of course, it's the room the girl and the old woman use for all their patients. The yelling bothers me, and I want to go outside, but this new automail is slow to respond and I'm not used to the pain of having non-organic additions attached to my human-like body. I lurch forward, banging my feeling shin on the doorframe and cry out, but this time no one rushes to my side; they're too busy making an angry and irritating racket.

"You're not him, Al, and no amount of pretending is going to change that," I hear the girl screeching. She only does that when someone she loves has really upset her, and for a moment I'm glad no one loves me enough to get that angry with me.

"I know I'm not him, I may not remember anything but I'm not stupid! What do you want me to do, just sit around here and play outside, like a little kid?" But you are a little kid, Alphonse, I tell him in my mind, and I surprise myself at how I'm starting to think in human terms about age.

I, as far as I have been able to recall, am only eight years old myself, and while I appear to humans as a child, in my own mind the term no longer applies. Anyone who has seen their mother destroyed, right before his very eyes; anyone who has had the limbs torn right off his body; anyone who has been betrayed and lied to and mislead his entire life; anyone who has had a life like mine cannot ever be a child again.

He is screaming at the girl that no one understands him, and I take that to mean that even he doesn't understand what he is.

I finally get the mechanical limb to function properly, and soon I am slamming the door shut, leaving the yelling and hollering behind, heading for a spot I favor here, by the side of the river under a tree.

I can't stay here; not under this tree, and not in this house. It can never be my home. I'll never have a home, for as long as I live, and judging by what I know of the other homunculi it will be longer than any human can survive. When the world has moved on, and not a thing is still remembered about Alphonse and Edward Elric, I will still be here, with my child like appearance and unfeeling limbs.

A shadow falls over the water in front of me, and I don't need to turn around to know who is behind me. "Are you done making all that noise?" I ask roughly, and he doesn't answer, only sniffles.

He crashes to his knees, his hands making fists in the grass, tearing it out and clutching it tightly for a moment before tossing it aside. Finally he looks at me, sidelong, suspicious like his brother. "What are you doing here?" he asks, subdued, curious.

I lean back against the tree, folding my flesh hand behind my head and starting at its mate: the mechanical one lying limp at my side. Right. With a different part of my brain, I tell it to move, but I can't get the same fluid motion as my real arm and when I get it where I want it, I find that the metal digs uncomfortably at the back of my head.

I smirk, and try to tinge it with a little innocence, so that he won't yell like that at me too. "I like taking other people's things," I tell him, making my eyes as big as possible, my voice as young-sounding as I can. "And this is your spot, isn't it?"

But this human isn't looking at my face, he's looking at my feet, stretched out in front of me. "You should be wearing shoes," he tells me, and I frown.

"Why?" I ask, dropping the act in favor of curiosity.

He's looking down, picking at the grass he uprooted a moment ago. "The grass," he says in explanation. "It will catch in the joints. Winry will be angry."

Ah, but she will get mad at _me _for damaging her creation. She will get mad at _him_ for damaging himself. "You know why she doesn't want you to leave," I say abruptly, leaning over, inspecting the joints myself and picking out the debris I can get at with my fingers. "She doesn't want to lose you." I glance up, noticing something new, and, unsure how to react, I return to looking after my automail.

He's dressed like his brother.

The leather pants, the red coat, the layers, at a glance even I am fooled. Now _that one _I never would have guessed.

Alphonse Elric likes to take other people's things too.

Even more that we have in common.

I watch as he sits forwards on his knees, hurling a rock into the river, and sitting back again as it makes contact with a satisfying _crash_ and sinks to the bottom. "Nobody understands what it's like!" he cries out, across the water, his perfect face twisted with frustration.

Before thinking, I reach out with my flesh hand, grabbing him by the elbow and pulling him backward, and now he's on the ground looking up at me, upside down. "You think I don't understand you?" I say blandly. "Or you think I don't count?"

He struggles to sit up, but now my hand presses on his chest, pinning him down, and I am the stronger of the two of us.

"You're no more of a child than I am," I say, and watch his face as the words sink in. You're no more human than I am, I want to tell him, but I know he won't believe me. Not yet. "You think I don't know what it's like to lose your mother? You think I don't know what it's like to lose your… brother?" I say, the term feeling odd on my tongue, and for a moment I think maybe I've never said it before. But if Envy wasn't an older brother, then what was he to me? "You think I don't know what it's like to wake up from nightmares about a pair of doors that open to reveal hundreds of creatures with violet eyes, that_ reach, _and _take, _and _destroy_?" The last sentence leaves me breathless. Maybe it is those creatures, and not the other homunculi after all, who are my siblings.

I let go of him, and he springs up, brushing the grass off his clothing. I don't know what I expect from him, but it isn't the sympathy I see in those wide grey eyes. He leans forward and says, "I didn't know you have nightmares too." He reaches towards me, and I shrink back instinctively. It doesn't _look_ like he is going to hit me, but for once I _don't _understand him.

He's on his knees in front of me, he's wrapping his arms around mine and pressing his cheek to mine, and the last time someone's touched me like this it's been my mother and I let myself relax into it.

He is so close, and so trusting, and if he really was the brother he was dressed like I could have killed him with my bare hands, but he, despite his appearance, isn't like the older one.

He's more like me.

When we return to the house the girl is just closing the door, and I know that she is going out to look for him because she stops on the porch when she sees us.

He's holding my hand, and even though I know that it's just to help me walk, just because the automail is new, I can't help but notice how much I like the closeness.

As we climb the steps to the front door, him much faster that me, she is looking at me with suspicion. "_You _found him?" she asks, and I know that tone in her voice. I remember it well. She's jealous. _She _wanted to find him by the water. _She _wanted to offer him comfort. But instead, all the comfort came to me.

I make my eyes big again, and make my voice young. "We talked," I say simply, although we didn't really say much.

She looks at my feet. "Take those shoes off before you go inside," she instructs, her voice brisk. "I bet they're full of mud, and I don't want it tracked all over the floors."


	3. Feeling Like Home

**Definition of Soul**

**Feeling Like Home**

"You know," Al says, relaxing in the grass with his head on my flesh knee, "I always thought I was going to marry Winry when we grow up. Now she's too old."

I frown, not sure how to take his statement. "Why are you so hung up on your age?" I ask him, genuinely curious. "I told you age doesn't matter for people like us."

He doesn't understand what I mean, but he answers anyway. "It matters to people like her," he said sadly. "She thinks of me like a little brother now, probably always will."

"I thought she always thought of you both like brothers?"

He sighs. "I don't know. I guess Brother and I both hoped for more."

I lay back in the grass. "Well," I offer, "now you won't have to share her."

He jerks his head up, flashing angry eyes at me. "Why would you say something like that?" he demands fiercely, and his usual gentle look is replaced by something far more suited to the older Elric.

I'm not concerned. I stay where I am, back to the cool grass, and look up at him through half closed eyes. I know him by now, I know this Elric, this boy who has offered me a home, would never hurt a fly, let alone an inhuman creature who tried to kill his beloved older brother. "I'm sorry," I say, but the word has no meaning to me. Perhaps it does to him.

He doesn't say anything, he's still angry, and he sits, arms around his knees, not speaking to me. The dog comes bounding towards us, avoiding me as usual and jumping on him, and his expression breaks, the smile taking over. The girl isn't far behind, waving her hand and calling our names. "Hey you two," she calls. "We're making cinnamon rolls for tonight, you should come help. It'll be fun," she coaxes, but she doesn't have to, he's already springing up from the ground to follow her. But I'm not Envy and I don't mind sharing, besides, she will never understand what he really is. And if I'm the only other homunculus left, well, then no one else will ever understand either.

"You too, Wrath," she adds, and I raise an eyebrow at her. "Come on," she directs, and watches how I stand up, still favoring my flesh leg but getting better every day. She told me, when she made me the limbs, that she didn't know if my body would accept them. My body, apparently, will take anything it's offered. "Al, help him," she orders, but he glares over his shoulder at me.

"I'm fine," I assure her. "See, I'm all right."

They walk to the house in a trio, with the dog following at their heels and me following at his. She can't tell that Alphonse was ever upset; she thinks we're going to have a fun afternoon of baking. I don't know the first thing about baking anything.

"I can't do this," I say once the ingredients are spread out, and it's the girl who looks up from the recipe to see what's the matter with me. Alphonse is still angry, and is still ignoring me. I hold up my metal palm, her own creation. "You said to keep stuff out of the joints." I gesture to the flour and milk and eggs and yeast that she has set out. "This is a lot of stuff."

She shrugs. "Wear a glove," she suggests. "Ed always did." She turns, opening another drawer and pulling out a single rubber glove and tossing it at me.

I don't catch it and have to bend down to pick it up. Al reaches for it too, and our eyes meet above the ground, both of our hands on the glove. "I said I was sorry," I tell him quietly, and I know eventually I will win him over. I move to stand up again, but he's about to say something.

"I always forget how much you hated my brother," he says quietly. "And every time I remember I understand why everyone is so surprised that I want anything to do with you."

"Al," I say, but I'm hesitant, not sure how he will take my offer. "If you want, I will try to tell you what happened between your brother and me. I know we aren't supposed to tell you things, but if you want to know… if you think it will help…" I trail off, and realize my eyes are widened unconsciously. This isn't an act, for once. It seems it is possible for me to be sincere after all.

He stands up, says something to the girl, and they begin to combine ingredients. She gives me little jobs to do, she tries to include me, and I admire her strength. If Al accepts me, then she is determined to do so as well. "Crack the eggs," she instructs, and I pick up the first fragile brown shape and smash it into the counter, looking with confusion at the mess under my hand.

Al laughs. "Not like that!" he exclaims, "You've never cracked an egg before, have you?"

I shrug. "Why would I have?"

And Al puts his warm (why so warm?) hand over my cool one, guiding me in the delicate business of cracking an egg without destroying it. "See?" he says, his eyes twinkling at me, and I think he is no longer upset. Perhaps my offer has been accepted. I try another egg, the way he showed me, and am rewarded with a running, dripping mass that slides from the shell, taking only a few fragments with it that I set to work picking out.

When the rolls come out of the oven, Alphonse and the girl sneak a pair of steaming cinnamon delights off the tray, pulling them apart with their fingers and laughing. Alphonse offers me a bite of his, and I shake my head, uninterested in food, but he is holding it to my mouth, smiling and watching me, and a take a bite to satisfy him. The flaky roll melts into sweet-spiciness on my tongue, and I let myself smile back. Food is a human necessity that I normally ignore, but this is more than sustenance.

In the evening, when I am in my bed, the covers kicked to the floor as usual, I see him in my doorway. The light is dim and he looks different, older almost. "Wrath," he whispers. "Tell me what you know."

So I tell him about the island; he remembers that much because he was human then. I tell him that the monster he thought was following them was really just a man, a man who had been sent there to torment them by someone who was supposed to care, and he has a moment of rage and another of relief, that even if they had not succeeded their Sensei would never have let any real harm come to them.

I tell him about them returning to the island and I tell him about Izumi bringing me home with her. I don't tell him about my own confusion about my true nature, and I don't tell him how I hoped she would be my Mother. I show him the ourobouros on the sole of my foot, and I tell him I could do alchemy with my body because I had taken his brother's limbs from the gate. He looks at me in horror; perhaps until this point he never really understood what a homunculus is.

I tell him about Sloth, the unwanted mother, and I, the unwanted son. I don't tell him how she never cared for me, but I do tell him how I helped to kill her by trying to save her, and he looks at me like someone struck him. It's pity, I realize belatedly. The little non-human is feeling sorry for me! "You know what she said when your brother finally defeated her?" I tell him roughly. "She said 'take care of each other.' Her last words were for you two. She was your mother!" and I'm trying to upset him again, because his sympathy has upset me. This is how humans do things, I think.

But he's shaking his head. "Mom would never hurt us. She wasn't our mother."

"You didn't understand that at the time," I push on. "You thought she was your mother, but she was mine, and your brother killed her!"

"Well I understand it now," he said flatly, looking at me with burning eyes. Then he sighed, the fire leaving his expression. "They never tell me anything," he says, almost wistfully, and I can't help but scoff at that.

"If they tell you what they know," I tell him, "they would loose their illusions." He looks at me, puzzled, and here, in my room, in the dark, I think maybe I can tell him what no one else seems to realize. "That you're Alphonse Elric."

He had been sitting on the edge of my bed with me next to him, our feet tucked under ourselves, side by side on the mattress, but now he is on his feet. "I _am _Alphonse Elric!" he cries, but I'm shaking my head.

"You're no more Alphonse Elric than I am your Sensei's child," I tell him quietly, and he's listening intently. "You're just like me. You're a created human. Your genius of a brother may have been able to create you a body, but no one can create a soul."

"I have a soul!" he screams at me, face suddenly red, eyes suddenly wet. "That's impossible! Everyone has a soul!"

I lean back on my hands, watching him closely. "I don't," I say, and I'm not sure if he's been told this before.

"I'm not like you," he says, and he's crying now. "I'm nothing like you! I'm a human boy! I _am_ Alphonse Elric!"

I'm shaking my head again. "That's what you said before, when you didn't even have a body," I tell him.

He isn't going to listen to me, I can tell that now. "But I had a _soul,_" he insists, and I don't push it. He won't believe me when I tell him that's impossible.

He walks up to me, his face very close to mine, and says to me, quietly, "If you _ever_ say that to me again, I will throw you out on your own, I don't _care _what Aunty and Winry say," and I know he means it, for now. But someday, before I leave, I will tell him the rest of what I know. He deserves at least that much.


	4. Like Humans Do

**Definition of Soul**

**Like Humans Do**

"Wrath, aren't you cold?" he asks me, and before I can protest he's bundling an extra scarf around my neck and pulling a wool hat over my hair. He picks up my hands in his mittened ones, and exclaims, "Your automail, it's freezing!"

I pull the hat off my head and shake my hair out, grumbling as I rub at my shoulder. "Hurts like a bitch, too," I tell him, and he looks at me strangely. "What?" I say, puzzled. "She said it would hurt in the cold. It's cold, and it hurts."

"My brother," he says softly, "Must have been in a lot of pain all the time, even after he recovered from the installation."

I rub my hands together and realize he's right, I am very cold. "Your brother was probably in more pain than I am," I tell him reluctantly. I don't like to see his face fall like that, not anymore, it's lost its thrill for me, but I've promised not to withhold any information about his brother, not like the others do. "His human body didn't regenerate like mine does, he didn't have a stomach full of red stones keeping him together," like you do, I add in my mind, but I don't want to make him angry and I know he won't believe me.

"Here," he's saying, grabbing my flesh hand again and pulling his own mitten over it. He holds my steel hand for a few moments between his own, trying to warm it I suppose, and then does the same. Outwardly, my hands match now. Have I never worn gloves before?

Well, gloves are a human invention. If it weren't for the chill in the ports of my automail, I wouldn't care if I were cold. I don't think I would even have known. Wanting to please him, I put the hat back on, pulling it down over my eyebrows and feeling its uncomfortable scratchiness on my forehead, but Al doesn't notice. Al is catching snowflakes on his tongue; sorrow for his brother set aside for now, his face enraptured at the frozen pieces of precipitation.

Wanting to try it out, this once, wanting to try yet something else only humans do, I tilt my own head up and stick out my tongue, but no flakes seem to land there, and I move my head from side to side determined to catch at least one.

Al is laughing at me. "Stay still!" he instructs, his voice shaking with his laughter. "Let them come to you!"

"They aren't coming to me!" I protest impatiently, startling myself when I loose my balance from swaying back and forth on the slanted roof while looking up. I stumble into him and we collapse on top of each other, slamming hard onto the tiles of the roof, and I wonder if the old woman heard the thump on her ceiling and will come up to investigate.

He's staring at me, and although I am getting better at it I can't read his expression, not this time. "What?" I ask, and watch my words exit my mouth as little puffs of frozen breath.

"I like you in the snow," he says, and he makes his eyes big, like I do mine when I want things, and I wonder what it is he wants.

"You like me in the snow?" I repeat, confused yet again. "What does that mean?"

"You have your own beauty, you know," he tells me, and his arms are around my waist. Maybe we fell this way, or maybe he put them there when I wasn't paying attention. But I'm paying attention now. "You're so pale; you look amazing in the snow, especially with your dark hair."

I tilt my head. His skin is pink with the cold; mine is marble-white, like it always will be, deathly compared to his, and he thinks this is amazing? He's leaning towards me, and I don't know why until his lips are right in front of mine, and it's over as soon as it begins: Alphonse kisses me.

Just once, and his lips are soft and warm, and now there is something that _I _can call amazing_. This is what humans do with each other_, a voice in my head tells me. We're staring at one another, but my eyes wander over his shoulder to the old woman, who has come up to the roof to investigate after all.

"You boys should come inside," she says sternly, and Al jerks with a start, standing up, letting go of me, and turning to face her.

"We were just, I mean, Wrath and I were only-" he stammers, and I stand up too.

"We were catching snowflakes," I say, and my voice is innocent in a way that his is not, not this time.

She nods sagely, not believing either of us, and turns to go back inside.

As I follow Al inside, I can't help but wonder: how is it that I am so sure he is not human, when I feel that I am learning what human means by being around him?


	5. In Shadows of Night

**Definition of Soul**

**In Shadows of Night**

I wake up gasping, with my arms stretched out as if I'm reaching for something but of course there is nothing there. For a moment I am disoriented, for a moment I am back in the underground city watching the yawning Gate of Truth opening up before me, for a moment those curling, snaking, coiling black _hands _with violet eyes like mine are tearing the limbs from my body and it happens too fast for me to scream.

For a moment I am lying helpless on the tiled floor, shredded, burned, watching with ambivalent horror the events unfolding before me.

I blink, reminded why I prefer not to sleep, but wondering yet again what exactly I am supposed to _do _when the humans retire for the evening. Alphonse has told me I should learn to read, but I don't have the patience or the interest to stare at words on a page for hours on end. I shudder, trying to shake the horrors freshly passed from my mind, but they never really go away. Sometimes I envy Alphonse because he does not remember that cavernous Gate, although I know it causes him great sorrow that he has forgotten his and his brother's journey.

I hear movement in the kitchen: footsteps padding across the floor and the running water in the sink. Quietly, I slip from my room, appearing silently in the doorway and Alphonse jumps when he sees me, nearly spilling his glass of water.

"I had a nightmare," he says, "I couldn't sleep."

_Me too, _I say silently. "Keep me company," I say out loud.

He drinks his water in one long, cool gulp and sets the glass on the counter and says "Okay," and follows me back to the room that has become mine. I sit down on the edge of the cot and he crawls over me, squirming under the covers and taking my hand, trying to pull me into the bed as well.

I feel myself stiffen. "What?" I say, and I'm suddenly defensive, suddenly confused.

"I thought you wanted me to keep you company," he says, and his eyes are so innocent but somehow I feel like there is something I'm missing.

"The automail is probably cold," I say, searching for an excuse and that's all I can come up with.

His grey eyes are bright in the moonlit darkness, and I wonder what my own must look like in this eerie silver light. "My brother has automail," he says, "I don't mind it."

"You don't remember your brother," I tell him, but I'm lying down next to him anyway; my excuses have been ineffective.

"It doesn't matter," he says, "I know I wouldn't have minded it," and he's throwing one arm across my chest and one knee across my hips, and I draw away from his touch.

"What are you doing?" I ask, feeling the panic rise. He's touching me, and it's not a little touch in bright light like he's done before, this a different, mysterious touch and I don't know what to do.

I'm scrambling to the corner of the bed, clutching the blanket around me, and I notice for the first time that he's looking hurt. "Sorry," he mumbles, looking away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean… it's just that, this is what I do with my brother when we can't sleep."

"Your brother's not here," I remind him, as if he needs reminding, and I regret it when I see the way his face freezes, the way he looks away, and suddenly I want to touch him instead of shrinking away, and I do: I wrap one arm around his waist and press my cheek into his shoulder.

He's warm, warmer than I think he should be and I don't know if the heat is created by the lives inside of him or just by his rushing blood that must be warmer than my own. "I know," he says into my hair, and his breath tickles on my scalp. "I'm sorry," he says again, "I know you aren't him."

"Well I hope so," I say dryly, and I still don't know what he wants from me so we sit like that, against the wall with the covers pulled up to our chins, my head on his shoulder and his breath in my hair.

And then I'm feeling those warm, small, gentle fingers creeping under the waistband of the soft pants I've been given to sleep in, and I nearly jump from the bed. "Don't!" I yelp, flinging myself away from him, wondering if I could climb up the wall if I wanted to badly enough. "Don't, please!" I say desperately, speaking half to Alphonse and half to the cold hands and mocking eyes of Envy.

He's staring at me in the grey light, light that's grey like his eyes, and he looks _worried, _and I wonder if this is another kind of nightmare. "What's wrong?" he asks, concern heavy in his voice.

How could he want- how could this sweet, this almost _human _boy possibly- Envy's words, his cruel eyes and that sarcastic grin are looming in my memory and I think he is going to hurt me.

"I- I can't- you don't-" I stammer, and I can't even make a sentence. "I'm not- please," I say desperately, even though that word has never worked before.

His expression doesn't match what I think he wants, and his warm hands are on my shoulders and I know he feels me shaking, and he draws me away from the wall and I let him only because I don't know what else to do.

"I'm sorry," he says, and this time his voice is pleading with me. "I'm sorry, sometimes I forget that you're not… like me," he finishes awkwardly.

I frown, waiting for him to say or do something else but he doesn't, and finally I venture, "What do you mean?" Alphonse has never hurt me before, and I want to believe he isn't going to hurt me now; I want to believe what he tried to do means something different to humans.

"I forget you aren't human," he says hesitantly, fumbling for words like I am, "I thought- don't your… parts… work?" he blurts out, and when he sees my startled expression he tries to explain himself further. "I mean, don't homunculi have… parts?"

"Parts?" I echo, and I follow his eyes to the place between my legs. "I have the same parts you do," I say, haltingly, hesitantly, staring at my own lap instead of at him. He doesn't try to touch me again. "And they work," I add, defensive, but still cautious.

He isn't looking at me either and his voice is very small when he decides to say something else. "I thought you wanted… I mean, you said to keep you company, and when we couldn't sleep at night my brother and I would… that's what we do," he finishes, and I don't even try to hide my shock.

"_Why?_" I want to know, and he still doesn't look at me.

"Because we love each other," he says to the wall, and I know that, I know the brothers love each other but I still don't understand. "I know it's wrong!" he blurts out, and his eyes are wild and desperate and I know, I _know_ for a fact that he isn't Envy and he's nothing _like _Envy but I'm still afraid.

I'm afraid, but I trust him. I don't know what love is, but I think that even if I don't have a soul I _do _have a heart and right now it's doing something strange in my stomach.

I've never been told anything about love and I've never really given it much thought, I've always dismissed it as a purely human thing, but I know that Alphonse can love; he loves the old woman and the mechanic girl and I think that right now he is trying to tell me that he loves _me._

"Okay," I whisper, and I watch him reach for me and draw his hand back again. "Okay," I say again, a little louder, and can't help but add, "but don't hurt me."

He slides his hand up my metal leg, fingering the un-flesh-like texture of it through my pants, and when his touch changes to skin I jump a little and he stops. "I wouldn't," he says, reassuring, and I swallow nervously. "I would never hurt you."

I can only imagine that my form must disgust him, I'm half bolts and wires and metal plating now and my skin must be cold and clammy to him. When he touches me I think that I can feel the blood running through his fingertips and I know that my blood is nothing like that; it's cold and slow and crawling and it's black instead of vibrant red. I've been fooling myself, I think, we're nothing alike, he may not be human but he's nothing like me.

His hair has been getting long and he reaches up and hooks it behind his ear and I look carefully at the curve of his cheek, outlined in moonlight. He reaches over and does the same with my own hair, sweeping it away from my face and his eyes settle on mine and I think they look violet in this strange light but I know it's only an illusion.

His other hand settles on my "parts" and I feel something very strange but I don't look away and I know he can tell what I'm feeling because a grin creeps across his face and my breath catches in my throat.

His palm is warm and the warmth feels _good_, and part of me knows that this isn't even love that I'm feeling, it's something else but I don't know what to call it and I don't really care, I just don't want him to stop. My eyes are closed but I tilt my face to the ceiling, and a gasp escapes my lips and I'm not imagining anything anymore, not Envy or his brother or a heart or even a soul.

There is a tightness, and urgency that grows and grows and I can feel his eyes on me and I can feel myself moving against him and I think my body is acting without me somehow, and then suddenly it's over and I collapse against the wall, and when I crack an eye open Alphonse is staring at his hand, which is covered in something thick and white. After a moment I look down at myself and see that it's on me as well.

Silently he stands up, leaves and comes back with a towel from the kitchen and wipes his hands on it, then begins to wipe me. I take the towel from him and finish cleaning myself, suddenly embarrassed. "Thank you," I say, and my voice sounds weird and the words are all wrong. "Alphonse," I try instead. "I…" his hand is still on my flesh knee, and I say the first thing I can think of. "I can feel your heart beat through your fingers," and that doesn't sound right either.

He's pulling me down on the bed, drawing the covers over me and slinging his arm across my chest again, his knee across my hips but I don't pull away this time.

"This is what you do with your brother?" I ask, and I feel him nod against my shoulder. _This is what he does with his brother, _I repeat to myself, and I know that there's nothing in the world that could make me feel more loved, or more scared, or more wrong.

_I've taken something from someone else again, _I think before I drift into sleep. _I've been given something that can never really be mine._


	6. The Mind

**Definition of Soul**

**The Mind**

There's never been any question that I have a mind.

My mind makes me who I am.

With humans, it's the soul, but I don't have a soul.

My mind is where all my memories are, and though they are mostly unpleasant, they belong to me and no one else. When I die, those memories will disappear. When I die, I will disappear.

"Don't say that," Al protests, but he's busy right now. He's pouring over his brother's alchemical journals; he does that every day, he thinks that if he reads them enough he will find some kind of answer.

When he and I first arrived here, he was drawn to me the way I was drawn to him. We were the same. We were alone, together. He used to come to me for answers, because only I could tell him about his brother.

Now he looks at books.

He used to delight in showing me what it was like to be human. Now he delights in filling his mind with information, and I can't share this with him.

I do have a mind. But I can't do alchemy; the books would do me no good.

Alphonse and I aren't really the same at all. He has a goal. I don't. And part of me hurts because of that.

At first I think it's the automail that's hurting me, but it doesn't feel like something in my arm or my leg. It feels like something in my stomach, where the red stones are.

I don't know what that means.

Alphonse is going to leave, and when I think about it my stomach hurts.


	7. The Heart

**Definition of Soul**

**The Heart**

Alphonse doesn't have nightmares anymore.

I can't sleep and I sneak up to his room to find him snoring lightly with a book over his face. For a little while I watch him, and then I reach out and take the book, careful to save his place, and put it on his nightstand. He smiles in his sleep, curling into the pillow, and I hear him murmur, "Brother."

I heard the girl talking to the old woman earlier in the day about Alphonse and the girl said, "If I lose him too, it would break my heart." I guess she's had her heart broken enough already.

It's a human expression but I know how she feels.

No one ever told me that we, as homunculi, have hearts like humans do, but no one ever said we didn't. It's not something I ever wondered about until now. If I have to guess what a broken heart feels like, I would say it might feel less like something breaking and more like something sinking, sort of like something sinking down from my chest and into my stomach. Something that might be a heart.

As I sit on my heels, watching him sleep, I'm angry.

I know that if I do indeed have a heart, I would give it to him as sure as it beats. I know that love is something that a homunculus isn't designed to know, yet I know it anyway, and I don't feel lucky, I feel angry. The scowl on my face is so intense it is starting to ache, and I stare at his sleeping form and know that I'm not the first one who's stared and know that I won't be the last.

What is the purpose of finding out what love is if all there is left for me is to find out what it is to lose love?

Because I am going to lose him to my creator, his teacher. She is coming and he will leave with her, and there is nothing I can do to make him stay with me, and my life will be empty again. I will have known the life of a human and will never return to it.

There is something I could do to make him stay.

I could tell him, and he would believe me now, about the lives inside him. I could tell him that he isn't Alphonse Elric, not the Alphonse Elric who was born to a human mother and father fifteen years ago, before my own existence. I could tell him he is the creation of his brother, made from the lost lives of countless humans; that his life force is merely that of others and not his own at all; he is nothing but an imitation of something real, just like me.

I could remind him how he sliced his finger chopping vegetables and the bleeding stopped before the old woman could even get him a bandage, and I could show him that my own finger would react the same. I could remind him of the countless acts of alchemy he's produced, all of them little things and all of them impossible, according to those books he reveres so highly. I could tell him that if his brother knew that he had failed, it would break _his _heart.

Then he would not try to find the older Elric.

I am angry, and I am angry with myself as well as the world. I have allowed myself to love someone, and by doing that I have forfeited some part of me. I sit, staring at this mysterious indefinable creature in front of me, and know that I will never get what I want. I could cry, scream, yell, and fight, and I will never have his heart. And because I have allowed myself to love him, I cannot bring myself to break his heart.

Because I love him, I will lose him, and I slam my fist on the bedside table, knocking over the glass of water and watching as the liquid soaks into the pages of an open book, blurring the ink and rippling the paper. I hear myself let out a yell that is pure frustration, not even a word, and Alphonse stirs, startled out of his sleep, and sits up.

I've frightened him. "Wha's wrong?" he mumbles sleepily, rubbing his eyes and clutching his blankets.

"Just go already!" I scream. "I'm sick of waiting, just leave me!"

In an instant his arms are around me, soothing me, rocking me, and I twist from his grasp, tumbling onto the floor, dragging Alphonse and all the blankets with me.

"I don't love you, I hate you!" I scream, but the rawness in my voice does nothing to make the statement true, and the old woman and the girl come rushing into the room; sleep still lingers in their eyes as well but they are tearing me away from him and I let them.

I am angry that I will always end up broken and alone and nothing is going to change that.


	8. These Hands

**These Hands**

I'm staring at my hand. It doesn't bother me that it's made of bolts and screws now, it's no different than what I had before: something I've taken from someone else. I reach out with my other hand, my real hand, the one I was born with (born?) and soft fingers close around my own (warm fingers, human seeming fingers), pulling them back to where they're resting on my knee.

"Use your other hand," the gentle voice says, and I look into gentle grey eyes (not violet, why not?) and I obediently reach for the tiny leaf with thick metallic fingers. I can't feel anything through them, but that is to be expected, I guess, and I watch closely as the thumb and index finger click together and I lift the fragile stem from the ground.

Deftly, he plucks it from my grasp and holds it up to the sky, leaning back in the grass, his other (both perfect) hand behind his head, the red coat splayed around him. "Good," he says approvingly, squinting up at the sun, twirling the little leaf in front of his face. "You're getting better," he tells me. "You can go soon."

"You want me to go?" I say, no hurt, no expression at all, really, in my voice, but he looks shocked at my words anyway.

He's surprised, I realize, that he _doesn't_ want me to go. He may not have expected this, but I did. Humans do that, they get attached. I press the soles of my feet together, feeling my flesh press into the unyielding metal, and lean forward, saying, "Because, I could stay."

I won't stay, I don't think for a minute I'll stay but some part of me wants to offer this strangely-human non-human some comfort. The way I wish someone had offered me.

"Would you?" he asks, his voice a little breathless, and he drops the clover I picked him without even noticing it.

"Yeah," I lie, because, sometimes, even a lie can be comforting. I reach for his hand again, staring at the lines in his palm, the swirls on his fingertips, and think that it's his brother, not Dante after all, who was better at playing god. Fingerprints are surely the mark of a human.


	9. The Soul

**The Soul**

_It's night and Rizembool is empty and the grass stretches out as far as the river and then beyond. The moon is high and full and there's a tree, or what was a tree but is now a twisted and charred stump keeping watch over the ruins of where the Elric house once stood. There's a figure standing over it, long haired and short, mismatched feet planted sturdily on the ground as if he expects to resist being knocked over at any time._

I don't sleep anymore and the nights are lonely. I want to watch Alphonse sleep because I remember that night we spent together and I want that to be every night.

But it can never be about what I want, not in this world of humans, not in this world of souls.

I don't jump when I feel the touch, I turn, grabbing wildly and using my powerful automail to throw my attacker to the ground; even in Rizembool I can't shake the need to watch my back. Part of me knows it's only Alphonse, but only part, and the part that trusts no one is the part that acts the fastest.

Al is laughing and I don't apologize, folding my arms over my chest and scowling down at him as he sits up on his knees. "I didn't expect to find you here," he says, his voice light, and I scowl harder.

"Why not?" I say, my voice flat. "Have you forgotten I like taking other people's things?"

He shakes his head. "I didn't think you'd want this," he says then, gesturing to the overgrown ruins of his home, his eyes becoming serious.

"When you have nothing, you'll take anything."

He doesn't respond right away, slowly standing up and gazing, next to me, beyond the tree and the house and the grass and the river at the moon, huge and crescent shaped and surrounded by winking little stars. "I'm leaving tomorrow," he says.

I nod. "I know." I've always known; I never fooled myself into thinking he would stay.

"But I'll be back," he says, and his voice sounds odd in the night. "I'll find my brother and bring him home."

"I won't be here." I don't look at his face when I say it; I can't bear to know whether or not he even cares.

I'm not Envy; I won't spend my life wanting the things I cannot have.

I'll spend my life angry, full of wrath, pounding the ground in frustration even in my sleep, and it's not what I want but it's all that I have.

Even the greatest scientist cannot create a soul, and even the most accomplished alchemist cannot change the very nature of a living being.

That is my curse: I live.

Alone.


End file.
